


the only hope for me is you

by mikaylamazing



Category: Supernatural
Genre: Angst, Episode: s15e18 Despair, M/M, Post-Episode: s15e18 Despair
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-11-10
Updated: 2020-11-10
Packaged: 2021-03-08 18:40:16
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,730
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27481342
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/mikaylamazing/pseuds/mikaylamazing
Summary: 15x18 aftermath coda: Dean tells Sam about what happened to Cas
Relationships: Castiel/Dean Winchester, Dean Winchester & Sam Winchester
Comments: 27
Kudos: 253





	the only hope for me is you

**Author's Note:**

> i can only hope for us to get an emotional winchester heart-to-heart about this in 15x19  
> title from the only hope for me is you - my chemical romance bc i cannot be stopped

Dean can drive. He’s never taken the time to think about just how many times he’s done it - how many times he’s pushed his father’s car down any particular interstate - just that it’s the break in between. 

_ Between what and what?  _ He used to think he had the answer, but now he’s not sure. So much of it hadn’t even been up to him. He tries to only think about the parts that were. 

On the road, alone, his mind goes blank for minutes at a time. It’s only okay because the roads are empty. The wrongness of it never even occurs to him. The air in the car matches the air on the outside; dull and dusty and stagnant. It makes it hard to breathe. Dean can still feel the vice grip squeezing his chest.

He thinks about stopping multiple times. He doesn’t. 

He ignores his still-ringing phone, considering tossing it out the window, watching it disappear in the rearview mirror. He opts to silence it, dropping it into the passenger side footwell.

The car practically drives itself, just like it always has.

When he finally meets up with Sam and Jack, he can feel the way his brother wants to scream at him. For not answering the phone or not running over fast enough, but the empty space consumes it all, flames snuffed before they get a real chance to burn. Barely long enough for Dean to feel the heat.

“What happened?” Sam asks, swallowing and looking back at the impala, like it’ll make him reappear. It doesn’t work. Dean would know. 

“We’re not going there, right? Not losing our minds?” He echoes Sam’s words from earlier, and on some level, he knows it’s maybe a little cruel, but aside from the weak signal of guilt pinging in his temporal lobe, the rest of his body is ringing with a numbness he’s never felt before. 

He can see the way Sam swallows, his hands clenching at his sides until they shake. Jack just stands there, puzzled in the way only small children are, but his shoulders sloping with resignation like a man forced to live thousands of years. Dean thinks he knows the feeling.

“He’s gone,” Jack says, not like a question, or even a revelation. Just a bold-faced statement that twists the knife in Dean’s gut just a little further. When neither Sam nor Dean says a word, he continues, “They’re all gone.” 

It takes more than a second for the words to settle, like drifting snowflakes. Or maybe nuclear fallout is a more apt comparison. He feels it in his fingertips first. When it finally hits his brain it takes everything in him to not just collapse to the ground and never get up.

“What do you mean ‘They’re all gone?’ Who’s ‘they?’” Dean asks, though he’s sure he already knows. It’s the reason his phone never stopped ringing, the reason he can still hear it now.

“All of them. Charlie, Bobby, Donna… and I think… everyone else,” Jack answers. It’s only then that Dean realizes just how quiet it all is. Like they’re trapped in a vacuum. 

“And by ‘everyone else’ you mean-”

“I think we’re the only ones left.”

Dean’s life has only ever been a series of poorly orchestrated nightmares; they’ve hurt him and made him feel alone and scared, and when he just couldn’t take it anymore, he’s died because of it, and yet he doesn’t think a single moment has ever made him feel more helpless than right now. A place where even dying doesn’t feel like a solution.

“They just started disappearing, like Charlie said about Stevie, and like…” Sam manages, but his voice wavers and peaks until the words die in the back of his throat. His eyes are red and irritated with the tears he refuses to let fall. Dean thinks he’d probably be in a similar state if he hadn’t already run dry back at the bunker. He can still feel the pinpricks, the tension in his eyes, but no release.

When he looks back to Jack, sees his taut face and tearless eyes, Dean  _ knows  _ he’s the only thing keeping them together. Dean is already so wracked with guilt, he can’t help but feel Jack shouldn’t have to bear this alone, but Dean doesn’t even have the slightest idea about what they’re supposed to do

“You must have seen it too. Cas-” Jack starts, but Dean can’t let him go on for about a hundred different reasons.

“No.”

“Dean-” Sam interjects, but Dean can’t let the words come out, not so soon. Not when he’s still barely comprehending what happened.

“No. We don’t have time to talk about any of this right now. We have to do something.”

“Like what?”

“I don’t know! Something! We can’t just do nothing! Right?” He directs the last of his statement to Jack, hoping beyond all reasonable expectation that there’s something they can still do. It’s the only thing Dean can afford to think. After a few beats of silence Jack speaks again.

“I might have an idea.”

“Great, let’s go.” 

“It’s a long shot. I don’t even know if it’ll do anything. It could be nothing-”

“Well, right now it’s all we have. Where are we headed?”

\--- 

Sam and Dean sit in silence, alone for the first time in what feels like weeks. And though he was the one screaming about how they had to do  _ something,  _ he’s still drained of hope that they can somehow win. 

“Do you think it’ll actually work?” Sam finally asks. He’s been sitting on the words for a while, waiting for Jack to leave the room, Dean can tell. He breathes out, wringing his hands together and feeling tears finally forming in his eyes again. 

“I don’t know. Does it make sense? No, but nothing makes sense; not right now, and not for pretty much our whole lives. This is the last shot we have, like the  _ actual  _ last shot. It doesn’t really matter if it works or not,” Dean says. He can’t help but breathe bitterness - it’s so much a part of who he is, who he’s been since he was a child - and it coats every word until Sam looks across the way at him.

“Of course it matters. We might be saving  _ billions  _ of people, people who we care about-”

“And maybe we’re screwing them over by bringing them back to a world that might not exist a day from now. We don’t know how any of it’s gonna work. Honestly, I’d give up if I even knew what that would look like at this point.” His voice grows louder the longer he goes on. When he finally stops, the air is quiet again. It makes him want to scratch his skin off. 

“When did you stop wanting to be a hero?” Sam asks, too sincere, like the boy Dean knew decades ago. It’s finally enough to break him.

“I’ve never  _ wanted  _ to be a hero. I’m not a hero, and I never have been. I’m selfish and angry, and I want this to be over for  _ me  _ because I can’t take it anymore. So yeah, maybe we save the world, again, and maybe we actually kill God and have ourselves a day of unlikely miracles, but I won’t pretend like I care because I  _ don’t _ .” 

Dean stares just beyond Sam, right over his shoulder because he doesn’t want to see the concern, or the strain of his face, or the way his lip trembles. He expects nothing more than empty, impassioned words; a rousing speech like the ones they’ve always given each other when they’re about to face the end of times. It’s not what he gets.

“What are you not telling me?” Sam asks, straightforward in a way that makes all the air leave Dean’s lungs, nearly choking trying to get it back. He considers saying nothing, keeping those moments he’s played back in his head at least a thousand times for himself. 

But he looks at Sam, and sees that kid again, the one telling him he can handle it because he’s grown up. Dean sighs, just the shallowest of breaths making its way out of his mouth. 

“Even if this works and we save everyone, Cas isn’t coming back. Not with the rest of them, at least.” When Dean says it, it feels like a weight is simultaneously being lifted and pushed up against him. It gets harder to breathe again. 

“What do you mean?” Dean can’t even open his mouth to respond. “Dean.  _ What do you mean _ ? Tell me what happened.” Dean swallows the last bit of denial left in him.

“He didn’t disappear like the rest. He was taken by the empty. He’s not with the others.” It’s not even half the story, but Sam looks like he can’t even process that much.

“I-I thought the empty could only come to earth when summoned. It told me.”

“Yeah, well, that’s kind of what happened.” Sam looks at him like he has at least a thousand questions for Dean to answer, but Dean’s not up for any of them. He can barely even let himself think about what happened. “So, we’ll get everyone back. Everyone will be with their families, and Charlie will have Stevie, and you’ll have Eileen, and I’ll be  _ here _ .” 

“Dean, Eileen and I won’t leave you, and Jack-”

“I  _ know.  _ I know all of that. But I want…” None of the words are right. He doesn’t know how Cas did it, how it seemed so natural and right, how he smiled the whole time. 

“I’ll be happy for you - of course I will; you’re my brother - but I’m not- I don’t know what’s left for me at the end of this.” When Dean finally looks Sam in the eye he hates it. Sam looks like  _ he’s  _ about to start crying, and Dean can’t stand being the one to have put him in that position, but Sam won’t even give him a chance to give a weak ‘it’s okay’ before he’s standing up.

“We can save Cas.”

“Sam-” 

“No. We’ve done it before. It’s not impossible. I’m gonna talk to Jack.” 

“You don’t-” 

“We do. He’s my friend. And Jack deserves to know.”

Dean refuses to think about how that conversation will play out.

And he refuses to hope for a thing. 


End file.
